Wissahickon School Board to draft proposal in opposition to state Senate charter school bill

A proposed bill in the state Senate about changes to charter school regulations concerned some officials in the Wissahickon School District.

The Wissahickon School Board directed Solicitor Scott Wolpert to draft a proposed resolution in opposition to Pennsylvania Senate Bill 1085 during its Jan. 27 meeting. The board will consider the draft resolution during its Feb. 10 meeting.

The letter, according to board member Ron Stoloff, would confront a number of potential problems with the proposed bill in terms of new regulations for charter schools.

“The bill is set up to, it’s called a reform of the charter regulation,” he said. “But there are at least four sections in there that would reform us right into the poor house. It would do some major damage.”

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Stoloff explained that under current regulations, if a group wanted to open a charter school, it would have to work with the local community and gather input from the school district.

“But under this bill,” he said, “if a college wants to start a charter, they just say, ‘We have a charter’; they don’t ask anyone. There’s no input from local people, the school districts or whatever. But then we are basically forced to pay for our students to go to that school, which we have no control over.”

Secondly, Stoloff said he also takes issue with the lack of control of the expansion of charters in the proposed bill.

“(They) could basically grow, whether we recognize what is going on as something helpful to our students and the community.”

He also said he has concerns about cyber charter schools and the way they receive funding.

“Right now we pay as much for a student to be enrolled in a cyber charter as we would to any brick and mortar school, which is preposterous, since their costs are much, much less; that is not even approached in this bill.”

His final issue with the bill, he said, deals with the number of years a charter school can wait before it faces community input.

“Right now a charter, every five years, must go before the local boards to ask for renewal,” he said. “And that gives us a chance to study it and ask questions. And if the charter is not doing the job for its students and the community, we withdraw its rights to exist. This bill changes it to 10 years. Ten years is a long time in the education field. It’s (an) eternity, and most importantly it’s [an] eternity for the students who are in that charter.”

Stoloff said for those four reasons, he believes the board should follow the footsteps of other school districts, draft a resolution and send it to “pretty much everyone who has an address in Harrisburg to basically say, ‘We are very much against this bill as it stands.’”

Board President Charles McIntyre said while the bill does have its flaws, it’s not all bad.

When the idea for cyber charter schools was first established and the reasoning for how they would pay for pensions was put in place, he said, “they made a mistake, frankly. They did what’s called a double dip.”

“Both the school district and the commonwealth (of Pennsylvania) both pay into those teachers, into the pension funds,” he said. “It’s called a double dip. And it’s costing the school districts a lot of money and it’s costing the states a lot of money as well.”

He said the good thing about this bill is that it addresses that “mistake” and it reduces the state’s contribution to the employees of the charter school retirement system by 50 percent.

McIntyre acknowledged the concern though that when a student transfers to a charter school or cyber charter school, “the dollars follow the student.”

“Right now the same amount of funds go with a student, whether they go to a brick and mortar, as you say, or the cyber,” he said. “And it’s been a long time standing, and the state is saying, ‘Well, wait a minute, the cyber shouldn’t get as much.’ And this bill, by the way, addresses that as well. I don’t know if it addresses it as well as it should; it’s only a 5 percent reduction. So do cyber charter schools really only have 5 percent less expenses than a regular charter school?”

McIntyre said the district currently has about 22 students enrolled in charter schools.

“Our school district, frankly we have a very good school district, and people like sending their children to our schools, so they don’t feel the necessity of sending them to charter schools,” he said. “In Philadelphia this is a bigger concern. A lot of parents are sending their children to charter schools. And North Penn [too]. A lot of parents are sending their children to charter schools in North Penn and it’s costing the district millions of dollars because the funds move from the school district to the charter school.”

Wolpert said there is currently no resolution recommended by the Pennsylvania School Boards Association.